My daughter and I

This is my story. I am a professional woman and I dedicated my life to the study and practice of medicine. For 25 years I practiced general psychiatry. I gave birth late in life. I had two children; a son and a daughter. My son and firstborn died suddenly when he was only five years old from a tragic accident. My daughter was only two years old at the time. At that tender age, she experienced a significant change to the affect and behavior of both of her grieving parents, but especially me, her mother, who had to return to work but had been her stay-at-home caregiving mother until that point.

When she was six years old my daughter’s best friend lost her own mother in a traffic accident. The distraught widowed father could not be relied upon to sustain his daughter’s relationship with my daughter, and both of the girls suffered as a result. The following year, I too was involved in a serious auto accident and almost lost my life. I mention these incidents because these were some events that traumatized my young daughter; my only remaining child. They surely shaped her childhood, and her view of the world, but were never a focus for therapy, as far as I know.

My daughter seemed perfectly normal throughout her childhood and into her middle school years. She chose her own clothes and toys for the most part, and there was nothing unusual about her choices. She did pick a few friends that I didn't care for, but I never prevented her from socializing with these children. Nevertheless, by the end of junior high it was clear that my daughter needed a change of venue. She was unhappy, and had not really found her peer group, and seemed to be floundering academically as well. We took the fairly drastic step of buying another house in a different city a short drive away, so that our daughter would qualify for matriculation at a local art school with a drama program.

Even though I was more informed than many other parents in my situation, I was not prepared when my daughter, in her junior year of high school, informed me that she considered herself to be partly a boy. I laughed it off rather casually. I told her the females who were in touch with the male parts of themselves were the lucky ones, able to access an inner Animus. I had no objection to her wearing boys’ clothes once or twice a week to school. She was playing with characterization and costumery at the time and seem to be thriving in her high school milieu.

Little did I know the extent to which pornography, fan-fiction, DeviantArt, and various social media websites were influencing my child in insidious and dangerous ways. At the beginning of her senior year she announced to her teachers that she was now identifying as a boy. She chose another name, with a more gender neutral sound, and sought permission to use the boys’ bathrooms and locker rooms. The principal, who met with us (her parents), informed us that he had no choice but to honor her wishes, thanks to Obama’s new interpretation of Title IX, allowing so-called “gender identity” to trump biological sex.

During my daughter’s senior year of high school I took her to see a friend and colleague of mine; someone who had known my daughter all her life. This woman was a gynecologist and I thought of her as a family friend as well. She informed me in the very first visit that she would be likely to place my daughter on Lupron: a hormone blocker, and that she would not be discussing my daughter’s treatment with me, now or in the future. Under the law my daughter had a right to privacy and as her physician, the doctor had a duty to maintain it.

For ten months my 17 year old daughter took Lupron injections once a month, administered under the direction of this gynecologist. This Lupron was described to me as safe and fully reversible; a kind of “pause” button to allow the child time to consider their decision. In reality, it is like stepping onto a runaway train, as it is the first step in a long chain of events that leads along a predictable pathway. I believe that the gynecologist prescribed the Lupron under false pretenses, almost as a kind of placebo, because at 17, my daughter was already through her puberty, and prescribing cross-sex hormones to a child would have triggered an assessment by a panel in a city two hours away. Finally, on the eve of her 18th birthday, she referred my daughter to a local clinic with a “gender specialist”, who would take over the case from now on. It is my distinct impression that the gynecologist was happy to wash her hands of any responsibility for my daughter’s future.

One Monday, my child met with this “gender specialist”, a marriage-and-family-counselor, who told her she could be on testosterone by the end of the week, on that Friday. As a psychiatrist, and a former employee of this very clinic, I could not take this news without some pushback, and discussed my strategy with friends. I walked in on Wednesday to confront this therapist. I brought in a written summary of what I considered the pertinent events of my daughter’s life, which I knew would be added to her medical record. I asked about the differential diagnosis, and the counseling she would receive prior to beginning something as drastic as cross-sex hormones. Of course, neither was forthcoming. The therapist attempted to shut me down by once again invoking the patient-therapy relationship, and HIPAA rules. I reminded her that I was the person paying for my daughter’s medical coverage, and I was prepared to take her off my policy if it meant I could prevent her from being placed on cross-sex hormones. I believe that from that point forward, the therapist cast me in the role of villain and unsupportive, possibly even abusive, mother. My daughter’s father, whom I had divorced in the year after she graduated, has taken a backseat in all of this. He disapproves of her calling herself a boy, but is happy to date women who do so. For the most part, he keeps his disapproval to himself.

My daughter is now 24 years old, and only recently began using testosterone. Her medical coverage is no longer tied to my own and, as she proudly states, I cannot stop her. She has at least four current friends who are also young women on testosterone, currently “identifying” as “men”. Because some of them are in intimate relationships with each other, they purport to be gay men, having gale male relationships. Lesbian is no longer a fashionable word in her circle; it is favored now by trans-identified males. Instead, queer or gay are the preferred terms in my kid’s crowd, and the accent on masculinity is no coincidence. Needless to say, this seems surreal to me.

My daughter and I have a strained relationship. We no longer live in the same city. We talk about superficial things. I don’t want to call her my son or refer to her as a boy, and that annoys her. She won’t allow any substantial discussion about gender issues, medical issues, mental health issues, sexual issues, and so on. I feel shut out by her, but at the same time, I am afraid for her. I do not think her choices are healthy. Nor do I expect her cohort of friends to all remain on testosterone indefinitely; one or more of them is likely to desist in the next few years. I hope and pray that my daughter will be one of the lucky ones, who figures out what a lie she has been sold before it is too late; before she has ruined her fertility and has her organs removed. But, in any event, her entire generation will pay a heavy price for this madness that has gripped our young, enabled as it has been by the medical and mental health professions.